Mumbai building collapse leaves several deads and dozens trapped

MUMBAI - The Associated Press

Rescue workers use a stretcher to carry a woman who was rescued from the rubble at the site of a collapsed residential building in Mumbai. REUTERS photo

A five-storey residential block collapsed in Mumbai at daybreak on Sept. 27, killing at least six people and leaving dozens feared trapped inside, in the latest building disaster to hit India’s financial capital.

Rescue workers scrambled to find survivors amid the debris of the flattened block, owned by the city’s civic administrative body, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, in the east of the city.

Several diggers were pressed into action to lift some of the larger slabs of concrete, allowing teams of rescuers to begin the task of taking out bodies and searching for those still alive.

Local politician Bhai Jagtap said that 22 families lived in the destroyed block.

Local commander Alok Avasthy from the NDMA’s response force initially said that up to 70 people were feared trapped.

The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai said that the building was for employees of the local administration and their families, who had been asked to leave earlier this year. “The building was around 30 years old. We had issued a notice to them in April, to vacate the building, but they did not act,” Khabale-Patil said. He did not explain why the families had been asked to leave.

Five other blocks have collapsed in or close to Mumbai in recent months, including one in April that killed 74 people.